In the past, law firms would use the method of word of mouth advertising to engage new clients. Word of mouth advertising is an unpaid form of promotion, oral or written, in which satisfied customers tell other people how much they like a business, product, service, or event. Word of mouth is one of the most credible forms of advertising because people who do not stand to gain personally by promoting something put their reputations on the line every time they make a recommendation. With the creation of the internet, more firms are starting to place their firm's information onto a website, for example, to reach broader audiences than word of mouth. The firm's website information may be an example of an online presence. Then, with the evolution of the internet came social media networks. These social media networks may include Facebook®, Twitter®, LinkedIn® and the like. In the beginning these social media networks were focused on an individual's social media network. However, more recently, social media networks have provided firms a new way to provide word of mouth advertising. For example, if a firm creates a firm Facebook® account, a client may “like” the firm's Facebook® page. This “like” activity is an endorsement of the services the client received. Another activity may also be a posting on Twitter®, such as a tweet. These activities are examples of a new word of mouth. However, with this new word of mouth comes a greater responsibility to be involved in reaching new clients and engaging those new clients via the various different social media networks.
Known approaches to social media management include aggregating a firm's social media networks to a single screen where a user representing the firm (herein after “a user”) may manage the postings, repostings, and connections surrounding the firm. For example, a social media management tool may allow the user to write a post that can get populated to all the social media networks without logging into each network individually. Also, within a social media management tool, the user may schedule a tweet and/or send automatic messages to those who follow a given firm. Known social media management tools are very helpful in gathering all the information displayable on one screen for a user to effectively manage. However, known social media management tools fail to provide a firm with any metrics around reaching out to new clients. For example, if the firm has seventeen (17) online profiles via seventeen (17) different websites and 100 Twitter® followers, do those items have enough reach to be effective? In addition, known social media management tools also fail to provide the firm with any metrics around engaging the followers that the firm has in social media networks. For example, if the user sends fifty (50) tweets a day to all 0.100 Twitter® followers, is the user positively engaging or overwhelming the followers?
Accordingly, the present inventors identified a need for improving the evaluation of an online entity presence including social media networks.